by Rachel Green
Daily Lobo
With Halloween just around the corner, it's the perfect time to tell ghost stories.
For the Southwest Ghost Hunter's Association, every day is the perfect time to share those spooky moments for skeptics and anyone who believes in ghosts.
The association hosts the Ghost Walk of Old Town every day through the end of October. The tour takes up to two hours, going down back alleyways and sharing the ghost stories of Albuquerque.
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Julia Brown, co-owner of SGHA and a tour guide for the Ghost Walk of Old Town, said not everyone in the association is a believer.
"We're on the skeptical side," Brown said. "We use scientific methods and we want hard-core facts. It's not because we don't believe, but you can't use the paranormal to prove the paranormal."
Brown said the association uses digital thermometers when searching for ghosts. She said temperature changes indicate the presence of spirits, because ghosts can absorb energy, making the area they occupy cooler, or they can reflect energy, making the area warmer. The association also uses an electromagnetic field detector, which picks up on energy that is not visible to find ghosts in an area.
At the beginning of the tour, Brown said there are two categories of ghosts - major and minor. Major ghosts have been seen several times, and the minor ghosts have been seen only once. Brown said there are 13 major ghosts and 26 minor ghosts in Old Town.
The first stop of the tour was the restaurant La Placita, which was a general store in 1706. Four ghosts are believed to be haunting the building.
Elizabeth, a ghost who haunts the restaurant, is the most frequently seen ghost in Old Town. She died of tuberculosis in her bedroom, which was behind the staircase in La Placita. She is said to look about 8 years old with long, dark hair and a white embroidered dress. Many times, she is seen with a doll.
The other three ghosts include Victoriana, a woman in a wedding dress, George, the ghost who plays practical jokes on the employees of the restaurant, and an angry woman who lives upstairs.
After La Placita, the tour goes into dark nooks and crannies in Old Town. Plaza Hacienda used to be a barn for the Armijo family. It is where Miss Armijo, aka the Hatchet Lady, lives. Seeing her fiance intimately involved with another woman, the Hatchet Lady grabbed a garden hoe and dismembered him. The other woman got away. There are no records of what happened to Armijo after that.
Other major ghosts include the crying woman in black, who appears in a small chapel behind La Placita during tragedies such as Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina; Confederate soldiers who roam the street on horseback; Mary, a helpful ghost in a small restaurant next to La Placita; and Sara Ruiz, whose house is now the Church Street CafÇ.
When she first bought the Ruiz household, Church Street CafÇ owner Marie Coleman said she knew right away that it was haunted. She brought a contractor in to examine the house when she heard voices.
"The voice yelled, 'Get that man out of my house,'" she said. "I just knew that I couldn't use him (the contractor)."
The contractor turned out to be the grandson of a man that Sara Ruiz had once dated, Coleman said.
The most popular ghost is Scarlett, who was a prostitute at a brothel, now the Covered Wagon, on the south side of the plaza. She is seen with a low-cut purple dress or with a garter on her left leg. There have been 26 sightings of Scarlett, but only one has been from a woman.
The tour ended where it began. Brown said the ghosts won't follow you home because they are connected with the places they haunt.
"If you're going to ghost hunt, be smart," she said. "Ghosts don't hurt you, but people who are scared hurt themselves."
Ghost Walk of
Old Town
Tonight - Oct. 31
6:30 and 8:30 p.m.
Tickets $20
For more information, call
(505) 249-7827 or visit
NMGhostTours.com
